Blog piece: Ads, Supporters, Endorsements and Bandwidth Throttling

[vaul]

@Dark0ne;

 

I completely understand the need for ads, but there have been many, many times over the years I've used Nexus when I disable ad blockers and almost immediately get hit with javascript viruses coming through the adds. That was the main reason I disabled them and have left them off. I'll try enabling them again, but the bottom line is that if I start getting add viruses again they wont stay on.

 

With regard to the endorsement system, I see the changes you described as a problem. It sounds like their main result will not be to cause people to endorse good mods that they use, but to just endorse for the sake of keeping their percentages up. That completely defeats the purpose of endorsements, which is supposed to be to bring good mods to the forefront. I liked it when you added the endorsement reminders long ago, but I no longer get those. If I download a mod, take a look at it and determine that it sucks, or simply doesn't fit my tastes, then I'm not going to endorse it. IMO endorsements arent a pat on the back for sharing; "jolly good, thanks for sharing even though this is crap and crashes my game". They're supposed to reflect a mod that is of quality that people like. Just because a mod gets downloaded 100k times doesn't mean that 80% of those people downloading it will like it. Also, unless your tracking unique user downloads, where the same person who downloads a mod multiple times (version releases) is only counted as 1 download, then that is severely going to skew the percentages of DL vs Endorsements.

 

I love Nexus, always have, and it is my primary mod DL site for Elder Scrolls and Fallout games. I certainly wont be leaving because I disagree with the endorsement system, but it does, IMO, make it harder to find good mods or allow good mods to be overlooked when it's an all or nothing system.

 

Cheers,

Vaul

[Gnasker]

I'm got to agree with vaul on this one. Even though I don't really mind seeing adds here (well I do, but I could suffer that for a site such as this) I don't like the idea of allowing a bunch of random scripts access to my browser.

Lately I've seen other sites who are integrating adds, in the form of pictures, into the design of the site itself instead of having the classic "link" approach. This could be an effective way of by-passing the add/scrip-blocker issue, since it wouldn't require any form of scripts to run. Giving the benefits of having add-revenues and providing us users with peace of mind.

Otherwise I guess I'll have to consider the "supporter" function and just keeping my scriptblocker enabled

[DeMoNhUnTeR1986]

I honestly don't see a problem with adds. You guys run a huge site and the money needed to matain the site doesn't grow on trees. (I wish). And mainly about endorsments. I agree to a degree. I'm not pro at mods but for some of my mods I have downloads in the 800 to 900 mark and ameasly 11 endorsments. Its seriously diheartening to look at a mod you put over 20+ hrs into and noone even bothers to comment or endorse. So anyway to make or remind pple to comeback with feedback or even an edorsment is a plus in my view.

Thanks

[HadToRegister]

I was a sysop on the old Quantum Link board which eventually evolved into AOL. I got out of it after the went public and the Wall Street suits took over. Was a ton of fun when we started but alas it grew big enough to attract the attention of the professional investors. I did some O'Hanlon Database programming for computerized dispatch system of the state fire control agency I worked for... Never try to run a 400 unit fire department on software programmed in BASIC... but QBASIC was as far as I ever got.

 

I used to be a member of Qlink back in the day, on my C64, that I upgraded to a whopping 1 meg of memory! hahaha

I also built a speech synthesizer for it, from a project either in Radio Electronics or some other hobby mag. (it's been a while)

Upgraded my Atari STE to 4 megs, when I switched to that later, always wanted the try the Amiga, but the reason I went

with the Atari was because it had built in MIDI ports, and I had about 8 rackmount synths to control

 

The most I got into was LOGO (pretty easy language) to teach yourself,

I had PASCAL and Visual Basic in College though

[Volek]

Interesting ideas, and hopefully successful. But honestly, I have a few concerns.

 

First off, I must admit that I'd rather give up the bandwidth than seeing another damn ad anywhere on the world wide web. I grew up with 14.4 kbit/s connections, so 750kbyte/s is already a dream come true :P Sorry but I'll never turn off my adblocker, as much as I love this site, I hate ads even more. I'm thinking about going premium though, I guess it's about time after using the site for such a long time. If not premium, I'll at least go supporter.

 

As the article said only very few people endorse a mod, in my experience it's about 1-3% of downloaders. I'm afraid a similar percentage will use the abstaining option. Most likely the same people who already use the endorsement system. I wouldn't go back to abstain from endorsing a mod that I downloaded but never really used, but that might just be me. At the moment I don't really see the advantage of abstaining, apart from getting better download speed.

So for me personally, this new abstaining thing is not gonna work. But hey I always say that when new things come up. We'll see how it develops.

 

Hmm, maybe a pop-up would help, one that reminds us every week or every month of the files that we downloaded during that period. You know, similar to the list that shows monthly downloads. I know that list exists, yet I rarely use it. I also know that this idea was brought up before....

 

btw I support an idea that was mentioned earlier by SirRomin: mods with a high endorsement/download ratio should get their own spot on the front page, or an award similar to file of the month, or their own category in the files dropdown menu...There are quite a few, pretty much unknown mods with a high endorsement/download ratio.

[Zetsuboketti]

I did not use to block ads but there was that security issue with some ads causing people to get malware. I vaguely remember a message about switching ad sources but I did not want to take that chance.

 

I'll support through other means though. Its the least I can do for the site.

[Allana]

Darkeye, I understand and sympathize with your position, but I also am in complete agreement with vaul's and other's comments about the risks of running without an ad-blocker. I won't run without an ad blocker for the reasons he and others have stated. Until security issues with ads are solved, it's just not worth the risk.

 

I also am not thrilled with what you're proposing for endorsements, as I think it will likely skew things, and make them much less useful to those of us trying to decide whether a mod is worth taking the time to D/L & try out. Since in many cases, uninstalling a mod from Skyrim can hose your game, trying out a new mod is far more work and time consuming. It usually requires loading a save from before the mod was installed and losing whatever progress you had made. This was not an issue for previous Bethesda games, but is for Skyrim.

 

And I think that vaul's suggestion for using the percentage of endorsements to unique downloads as a second method of rating mods is excellent.

 

A possible reason for folks not endorsing mods: I was under the impression that you could only endorse one mod per month. I believe that's how it worked when I first started using Nexus several years ago. The result was that if I had already endorsed a mod, and wanted to endorse a second mod, then I either had to un-endorse the first mod, or wait till the following month, and by then I'd often forget. I'm not sure when that changed, but it is clearly no longer the case, as I was able to endorse several of my favorite mods this morning after reading this article.

 

Perhaps others are suffering from the same misunderstanding, which would at least partially explain the low levels of endorsements. It is much easier to remember to endorse a mod when you first get it and decide you like it. Having to wait makes it likely the endorsement won't get made. So, perhaps a notice to members about it?

[MrWulfX]

Really I'm not seeing the problem here. If you can afford the sixty bucks for the game and twenty each for the DLC's when they are new then you should be able to shell out a few bucks a month to be a premium member. Paypal is real easy to set up and comes in very handy. If you aren't willing to pay for a membership as your contribution then the least you can do is suffer through a few measly advertisements. Everyone is clammoring about the recent malware scare but non seem to realize that if they had been doing their part to support the site all along it would never have come to having questionable advertisers buying spots on the site. The internet is NOT free much to the surprise of millions. It has been supported since the very beginning by companies looking to sell someone something and make a profit. You should feel good about supporting this site and ALL the modders, they do a fantastic job and without them Skyrim would just be a vanilla and over once you killed the dragon. Hell if a mod works at all I will endorse the creator even if I don't like the result. they worked hard to accomplish something that I cannot and I am grateful for this. So everybody quit yer bitchin' and pony up a buck or two, either that or let the ads flash for a few seconds. Then we can all get back to playing Skyrim the way we want to play it.

[thewolfsage]

@ MrWulfX

 

There wasn't a malware scare because so many people are blocking ads that the Nexus had to turn to "questionable" advertisers. Far from it. Netseer, the advertiser in question, is considered one of the most ethical advertisers in the business. There was a malware scare because some malicious third party hacked Netseer and used Netseer's ads to spread their malware onto the computers of unsuspecting internet users which lead to Google putting up a warning. Ad blocking had absolutely nothing to do with it, and neither did those of us who use ad blockers. If anything last week's malware scare proved that malvertising is a very real threat, malicious and hacked ads show up on sites like the Nexus all the time. So if and until malvertising is no longer a threat my ad blocker stays on. I might consider becoming a supporter once I can pay using a method other than paypal, but I'm not going to stop blocking ads. That's a security risk I'm just not willing to take. Yes it sucks that the Nexus looses money in the mean time, but oh well. And if that means that I'm not "doing my part" than so be it. My online security comes before any website.

Edited February 12, 2013 by thewolfsage

[21crescendo]

@ALL

>I don't know if this topic is still being discussed or whether anyone gives a hoot, but I'm going to go ahead and say it...You know why the Download to Endorsement ratio is screwed up?

 

>Its the ''one-hour'' limit to endorsements that you guys have implemented after downloads. Seriously, think about it, even if somebody likes a mod that they just downloaded, and even if they actually want to endorse it, its the one-hour wait that causes them to lose interest....

 

>the one-hour downtime is just too much for a mod user to stay interested in actually making that commitment to wait for one whole hour just to endorse....Only those who consciously take the time to keep their browser open on that particular mod's page end up endorsing it...

 

 

>I'm not saying that the one-hour limit should be removed entirely, maybe it would be wiser to have it lowered; say 15-20 minutes?